Dungeons & Dragons Online Hands-On

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We don our armor of gaming +1 and head into the dungeon. New impressions, widescreen clips, and bunches o' screens.

By Dan Adams

Dungeons & Dragons is a pretty extensive license going back to its roots. There's a ton of history there but it's also a name that can be expanded on as Wizards of the Coast has been doing as of late. The newest addition to the lore is the world of Eberron which is being described as a more pulpy look at the series than has been seen in the past. High adventure and intrigue are the rules. Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach is the newest addition into the computer games section of the franchise that is much closer to the type of experience the Dungeons & Dragons pen and paper game provides than MMO out there right now.

If you're looking for a direct comparison to other games on the market, D&D Online probably would come up as a mix between Guild Wars and Diablo styles of play. There are certainly a lot of differences as well, but D&D Online brings a lot of the same instanced team-based gameplay that Guild Wars is famous for along with a combat style that is akin to the Diablo one click is one sword stroke kind of action. The result is actually pretty exciting. As D&D Online enters into its beta testing period, things are looking fairly tight already as we found out yesterday while playing the game at an event in San Francisco.

While the event offered another great look at the city of Stormreach, many of the large houses associated with the different races, and various dungeons, the emphasis was definitely on the gameplay style. Developer Turbine, famous for the Asheron's Call series, have taken a lot of time to make sure that Stormreach really feels like a D&D game. Therefore, most quests will begin with a trip to the tavern, in the case of this demo, The Leaky Dinghy. Players will find all sorts of quests inside as well as news about the world. Any parties looking for a good time only need to enter its doors.

Once on a quest and in a dungeon, the pace of the gameplay ramps up pretty quickly. Combat works much like you would imagine. Click to attack and watch the hit points go down. Each character has a set of skills and spells as well depending on level and class. The big difference to combat is in how these skills actually work. Unlike most MMOs, D&D Online will make players really consider their options before using their spells and skills as each one of them has a number of charges associated with it, just like they do in the pen and paper game. Only resting at a rest shrine (which can be found in each quest area) will give you back those charges. The point of restricting how many times a skill can be used is to promote strategy and teamwork. Should player use their skills like crazy at the beginning of a dungeon, they may find themselves in deep trouble towards the end.

The quests themselves are set up to be quite a bit more interesting than your basic "beat everything up" sorts of quests in many other games. Each area has been crafted so that groups with a balanced group will do better than one with all fighters. Aside from having a variety of monsters that provide different challenges, the levels themselves have traps, secret areas, and surprises that will require more than just one type of adventurer to overcome. For instance, rogues will be able to detect traps and help find ways around them.

All surprises aren't stationary devices either. Because each dungeon is instanced, Turbine can mess with the environment. For instance, while battling through an area in one of the dungeons with a group, the floor collapsed below us and dropped us right into a pit of nasty undead and spiders. Luckily we had a cleric with us to take care of the undead, but it definitely made the trip more memorable.